House panel seeks faster Yucca license application

Mary Manning and Benjamin Grove

Monday, Sept. 9, 2002 | 11:21 a.m.

House lawmakers are goading the Energy Department to speed up the plan to construct the world's first high-level nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain.

A 223-page report written by the House Appropriations Committee's subcommittee on energy and water asks for $524 million for Yucca Mountain and urges the department to move faster with its application for the dump.

"Given the importance of timely repository opening, the Department should take all reasonable steps to accelerate submission of the license application into early fiscal year 2004," the report says.

The fiscal year starts Oct. 1, 2003, more than a year ahead of schedule.

The report, which details budget requests for energy and water projects for the next fiscal year, was done in July by the 13-member subcommittee headed by Rep. Sonny Callahan, R-Ala.

Of the eight Republicans and five Democrats on the subcommittee, only one -- Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif. -- voted against Yucca Mountain. According to the report, lawmakers say the department needs to construct the national waste dump as soon as possible to avoid costly payouts in lawsuits filed by nuclear utilities, and to allow for faster cleanup of nuclear materials at U.S. defense and energy sites.

An Energy Department spokesman was not available for comment today.

Energy Department officials have said they planned to submit the application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by December 2004, with the ultimate goal of opening the repository by 2010.

But assembling the license application is a complicated task, and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and department Yucca chief Margaret Chu have consistently said their goal was to submit it by December 2004.

There is much to do before then and the schedule is already "extremely tight," Chu told a National Academy of Sciences panel in July.

Nevada lawmakers, who adamantly oppose Yucca, also oppose accelerating the timeline. It won't happen, said Tessa Hafen, spokeswoman for Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.

"Even the December 2004 deadline wouldn't be feasible unless they are fully funded (by Congress), and Sen. Reid will continue to cut that funding," Hafen said.

"There have always been members on both sides of the aisle who want to approve Yucca Mountain without questions, without investigation, and to deem it safe and move on," said Amy Spanbauer, a spokeswoman for Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev.

She called the recommendation "unrealistic and irresponsible."

The Yucca project has long been plagued by delays that irked pro-Yucca lawmakers. Congress in the 1980s promised nuclear power plant owners that the Energy Department would haul high-level waste away from their plants to Yucca by 1998.

But Yucca construction still has not begun. Now the nuclear utilities are suing the government for billions of dollars while waste piles up at their plants.

Energy Department officials still optimistically cling to a target date of 2010 for opening the dump. They will have to meet a number of milestones in an ambitious schedule.

The department has asked Congress to approve a $527 million budget for next year to help it meet its 2004 goal.

Reid, the No. 2 Senate Democrat who sits on the Appropriations Committee, had slashed the budget to $336 million in the Senate version of the bill. A joint House-Senate panel will hammer out the final budget.